


command me to be well

by Nonymos, piglet_illustrations (thefilthiestpiglet)



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Fandom Trumps Hate, Genital Piercing, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha breaks the Winter Soldier out of the Red Room, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Past Rape/Non-con, Recovery, Unresolved Sexual Tension, dental gore, intimacy is the greatest mission of all, standard Winter Soldier trauma umbrella
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 04:01:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19433509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonymos/pseuds/Nonymos, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefilthiestpiglet/pseuds/piglet_illustrations
Summary: Natalia Alianovna Romanova breaks out of the Red Room under the Winter Soldier's guidance. Or is she the one doing the guiding?My FTH auction fic for thefilthiestpiglet, with amazing art by them!





	command me to be well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefilthiestpiglet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefilthiestpiglet/gifts).



> Hi hi! Here's the first of my three FTH fics this year. Please enjoy and thank you so much to thefilthiestpiglet for bidding on me!

Yelena was the trigger. Not the cause, no; Natalia had been planning the killing in the back of her head for a very long while. But the day their handler killed Yelena was the day Natalia killed _him_. As soon as he dropped on the cement floor next to Yelena’s body, Natalia took his weapon and moved out of the room as if directed to do so by an exterior force. She did not wipe the tear tracks on her cheeks; they would dry on their own.

As she advanced, she found in her mind plans and tactics ready for use, things she’d noticed and stored in an unmarked place as the years went, a million little details that now compounded to aid her unbroken progress through the base. Like a video game she’d played a hundred times in her childhood, and forgotten, only for it to resurface all of a piece now that she had actual opponents.

Cleaning up the entire Red Room took her six days. A lot of those were spent waiting out for people to open their safe rooms, to undo their barricades, to peek out into the hallways. They always cracked before she did. Beyond everything, the Red Room had taught her patience. Doors unlocked, creaking hesitantly. Natalia watched them open, immobile and watchful, like a spider in the corner. _I think she’s gone now._ Famous last words.

Of course _some_ things went wrong; by the time she’d cleared the deepest floor—five stories under, a dark place of laboratories and surgery rooms even she had visited only twice in her career—she was bleeding from the side, and she was covered in bruises already turning blue and yellow. Her left eye was closing; blood was trickling into the other one from a cut in her scalp. Still, in her mind, the game said: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU WON!

Everything was silent and dead. The walls were metal, the floor was bare concrete. Pale neon lights flickered overhead. She was barefoot, completely quiet, gripping her gun without clutching it too hard, shoulders loose, back straight. She left bloody prints when she walked, which was fine. If there were people still alive, she _wanted_ them to trace her; it was so much easier than playing hide-and-seek.

But there was _no one_ left alive, her subconscious assured her. It had faithfully kept track, counting down as the bodies fell. They were all dead. They were all dead.

She came to a halt in front of a massive steel door. Thicker than a safe room’s, thick enough that the amount of explosives needed to bring it down would be sure to destroy whatever was inside, as well. Except it had been left ajar.

Natalia threw a handful of gravel at it. No sparks; it wasn’t electrified. She gave it one push and stepped back, her aim unwavering. The door opened slowly, slowly, with a deep creak of giant hinges.

 _“O bozhe,”_ Natalia whispered before she could stop herself.

_The Asset was on base._

Her body started shaking with retroactive shock. Oh how close she’d been to death. If she’d known, she would have never _tried._ She would have watched Yelena die without so much as a tremor in her hands. But she hadn’t known. And _they_ hadn’t deployed him. Why? She would never know why. Panic, confusion and uncertainty disrupting the chain of command, probably. Nobody daring to actually use him, give the orders. It didn’t matter. He was there and they hadn’t deployed him.

He was strapped in the Chair with the halo still closed around his head. There was a dark pool of urine at his feet, and the thicker smell of feces in the air. Six days. No man could survive without water for six days. But the Asset had, though he was emaciated with dehydration, his blood most likely thick and pasty in his veins. She wondered how much longer he would have stayed alive if she hadn’t found him.

She stepped forward, still holding out her gun, aiming at him. His eyes slowly moved to look at her. Natalia’s heart was furiously trying to pound out of her chest. He wasn’t even _unconscious._

The mouthguard was on the floor; for all that he was free to speak, he didn’t, just watched her come. She was terrified, which was stupid. He was in titanium restraints. His head was held up and back by the halo. His cheeks were unshaven after six days, his hair matted with sweat, his eyes sunken deep, bleary and unfocused.

He was in his cryo suit, which meant they’d _just_ gotten him out of the tank when the first alarms had sounded. Natalia was struck again with the fact that if she had begun her killing an hour later—just a small hour—she would be dead now.

She swallowed, then suddenly closed the distance in three rapid steps and pressed her gun hard against his forehead.

Never again would she have a chance like that. If she just left him there, he would survive until reinforcements came from Moscow, until they made him operational again; and even if he shriveled to death, they’d find a way to bring him back, to pump water and life back into his body, like they already had a hundred times, he would hunt her to the end of the world, he never stopped, he was a monster—

The muzzle of the gun pushed against his head. Her finger squeezed the trigger, nearly taking the shot. He stared at her for a long burning second; then he closed his eyes.

She took the gun away.

He reopened his eyes, which wasn’t easy with how rheumy they were. He was so dehydrated the red indentation in his forehead was slow to disappear. _Six days,_ she thought again. _Six days._

He watched her go to the water pack in the corner—left where he could _see_ it; God, this torture, for six fucking _days—_ and tear out a bottle. He watched her come back, he watched her struggle to twist off the cap with hands that were suddenly shaking even more than the rest of her body. Her gun stuck under her arm like a fucking rookie. Even when she gave him the water, he just stared at it, as though she was not worthy of doing this for him.

“Drink,” she said, pushing the bottle against his lower lip.

He did, his Adam’s apple bobbing with every swallow. She waited until he had drunk the whole thing; then she went to the control board—his eyes still on her—and released him from the chair in a sudden hiss of hydraulics.

He didn’t move, only watched her come back.

“With you,” she said, breathless. It felt like stealing a nuclear missile. “I’m with you. Do you understand?”

He stared. God, her heart was going to break a rib. She thought maybe he was too dazed to speak.

“Nod if you understand.”

He nodded, slowly.

*

By the time they’d gotten out of the basement, the Asset’s head seemed to have cleared a little. He dressed in the handler’s clothing she got for him off a dead man. He armed himself with the unthinking gestures of a professional and went automatically through the motions of setting explosive charges in the Room, circling around the building with methodical efficiency and meeting her back at the entrance without a word.

Not once did he falter as they walked away from the ruins, hiking three days straight through the Siberian wilderness. He kept staring ahead, trudging through the snow. By his sheer presence, he kept Natalia from thinking about what she’d done, what she would now do. He was taking up all the space inside her. She could hardly believe he was there, walking next to her; it felt like she was traveling alongside a predator who simply hadn’t noticed her. He said nothing at all, during those three days, and she said nothing either, in case he _did_ notice her and attack after all, just for daring to be in his presence.

Natalia had seen him in combat once, years ago—after she’d identified the target he was to destroy. He had moved past her, holding a weapon he’d used so recently that the heat of it had hurt her skin. She had watched his arm glint in the cold sun, watched his dark reflective goggles as he took the second shot, his hair blown back by the detonation. He had taken the recoil of a rocket launcher into his body without so much as flinching.

He had also executed three Widows on two separate occasions, one on the field and two post-mission; but she hadn’t been there for that, only heard about it afterwards. She had lain awake at night wondering how it would be to be killed by him. If he would do it from afar with a gun, or if he would touch her. With the coldness of a blade, of a garrote wire, or maybe only his hands, in her hair, around her throat, his fingers the last thing she’d feel.

The man she saw now was formidable just like in her memory, but he was also so _quiet._ Not just in the way he moved, not just because he didn’t speak. The whole of him was quiet. Absorbed. She had a feeling she could have left him to sit in the snow and come back three days later to find him still there, powdered with white crystals, lost in fathomless thought. And she kept remembering the way he had closed his eyes under her gun. It gnawed at her. The Asset did not close his eyes. The Asset glared at you until his mission was done, until ice closed his eyes for him.

*

They eventually found a town, stole a car and drove all the way to the coast. Natalia was making all the decisions, which was maintaining her in a constant state of stress. She felt she was passing a prolonged test. The Asset only watched with what she had to assume was approval, because he had not yet taken command. Not yet said a single word.

She had no intention of staying in Russia. If there had ever been a time for patriotism—when she was a teenager, perhaps: before the first of the Widows was executed, when the ideals still outweighed the sacrifices—it was over now. Crossing the ocean was the only way for her to even begin feeling marginally safe, and going to America felt logical, in a way. She had betrayed her country so deeply it made sense to join the other team. And she had been taught how to blend in, there. She would find her footing easily.

The Asset did not speak against it. He followed, which must mean he approved of that plan, too. He remained silent.

*

The Widows had been kept in line with training and beatings and, most importantly, drugs. Natalia sweated them out in the hold of a rickety freighter bound for the Bulk Petroleum Marine Terminal in New Brunswick. She didn’t see the blackout coming, chalked it up to seasickness until she fell to her knees and lost control of her body.

For three days she did not know where she was, hallucinated Yelena with her silver hair, cried for her to come back, to just wait a moment longer. She emerged in a fit of paranoia, fully expecting a metal hand to come crush the life out of her, _stupid little girl, you’ve shown weakness in front of him—_

But the Asset was still there, positioned in a way that would allow him to watch the only exit while still keeping her in the corner of his eye. His eyes, which had so far only seemed blank or tired, now appeared wary. Of _her?_ In her receding delirium, she thought—with an odd feeling of clarity—that he was trying to figure her out; that this was all he’d been trying to do ever since the first moment he’d seen her.

She was shaking with all her limbs, bathed in sweat, and it occurred to her, now that the fever was receding, that she was deadly cold. They were close to the engines which diffused a slick, oily sort of warmth in the hold, but pockets of icy air regularly burst in from the rocking of the boat, and her sick body would not resist for long to those kind of temperatures.

“Can you,” she said—her throat so cracked she had to stop and cough. It felt like madness to ask anything of him, to draw his attention, but they were together. He was _with_ her. She had said this, and he’d nodded. They were a field team. She could _ask._ “Can you help keep me warm—”

He unfolded from his nook of metal, went to her, grabbed her by the waist and kissed her.

Natalia bit his tongue and hit him hard in the plexus; he staggered back, hit the wall with a bang of metal and slid to the ground again.

She stood there, braced into her guard so hard she was near shaking out of her skin; but he didn’t come for her again, just watched her with wide scared eyes.

 _That_ shocked her even more than the kiss had, his fear so sudden, and so suddenly obvious.

Her mind worked double time to make sense of what had just happened. She was used to Red Room men making use of her. But here? Now? While she was covered in her own sick? She didn’t understand, didn’t _understand,_ until her fumbling mind stumbled upon what she’d just asked: _keep me warm._

Bile rose in her stomach again. Not so much because of what the order meant to him—but because of the way he’d obeyed it, so unthinkingly _._ Oh, God.

All this time she’d been thinking of herself as his student, hoping his silence was praise. But no. He had no idea who she was. He had no idea he’d haunted her dreams and nightmares for years and years. He hadn’t understood a thing to everything that had happened. She had said _follow,_ and he’d followed.

He thought she was his _handler._

“Listen to me,” she said. The feeling of her own idiocy rose in her like a nausea; she pushed it back. First things first. “Never do that again. You understand? Nod.”

He nodded.

His obedience almost made her sick again—how stupid was she, to only realize this _now—_ and retroactively terrified, like she had walked into the pilot’s cabin only to realize that there was nobody there, that she should have been flying this thing all along, and that they hadn’t crashed so far only thanks to sheer luck.

“When I say _keep me warm_ it means keep me from dying of cold.” She walked to him and shook out the greasy cover on top of which they’d been sitting; then she threw it over his shoulders and slid underneath with him, tugging it around them both. “Like that.”

He was very tense against her. She thought of how she would react, herself, if a handler gave her an order she misread that badly. She thought of what she would expect in return.

For a surreal moment she entertained the thought of actually punishing him. But it was like catching a snowflake; when she took a second look at it, the thought had already melted away.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “The order was confusing. Now I’ve cleared it up and the confusion will not happen again. Yes?”

He nodded again, cautiously.

*

They snuck out of the ship before it came into the harbor, where the containers surveillance would have made it impossible to get away. It was easy—all they had to do was get onto the bridge at night and jump into the water.

The Asset did not hesitate when she told him to undress completely and throw himself into the North Atlantic ocean. She followed suit, crashing through the black waters. This temperature was deadly as a bullet. But the Asset and the Widows had been trained to keep fighting with a bullet in them. And they had also been trained to withstand extreme cold. The Asset more so, really.

Soon enough they were stumbling onto land, stiff and numb. Natalia had packed their clothes into a waterproof bag, along with money and food that would last until they found a hotel. She’d planned for everything. Except for the Asset’s metal arm.

 _Fuck,_ she thought, seeing him come out of the water onto the washed-up beach littered with garbage and rotting seaweed. His body was sickly pale except for his left shoulder, red and inflamed. As her gaze traveled down, she went still. There were metal piercings in his cock and balls.

She stared for a moment, then looked away, abruptly ashamed, when the windchill bit into her own naked body. Her skin was bristling with goosebumps, her cheeks flaming hot. The piercings had burned themselves into her sight. They’d cause chilblains, too. She couldn’t think beyond that fact for now.

Unaware of what the sight of him had provoked in her, he unzipped the waterproof bag and they put their clothes back on. It took them only two minutes; they both had long hair that would drip down their backs, so she put hers up in a bun using a twig. Then she did it for him, too, when he only looked in wary confusion at her after she ordered him to do the same. When they were both clothed and certain enough not to die of hypothermia, she led him along the road away from the harbor. He followed. He always followed. He would do everything she said.

By the end of the day, they’d reached a small town, bought food and supplies—well, _she_ had, while he stood by the door—and booked a shitty motel room. The tips of Natalia’s fingers were burning and itching with chilblain as well. She kept thinking about how it must feel for him, the lesions much more extended and severe on his shoulder, much more intimate over his genitals.

The piercings had disturbed her all day. The Asset did not do undercover work, which meant those additions were meant for his handlers’ enjoyment. But—Natalia’s mind insisted—the Asset wasn’t something you _raped_. It wasn’t even about the fact that he was a man; to imagine him naked, sticky and panting—it simply didn’t make sense. He wasn’t enough of a person for this to happen to him. He was a weapon, a legend, a ghost. And he was so _quiet,_ so eerily pliant, that she couldn’t even imagine him pretending to go along with it, like a Widow, or begging and crying, like a prisoner. Only enduring it, absent and mute.

“All right,” she said after they’d locked the hotel door behind them. It was a double bed, but she didn’t have time to worry about that right now. “Strip off everything.”

He did, then waited as she rustled through the plastic bags, standing there with all his scars and lesions. His body was sharp edges, hard planes, pale stretched scars. They didn’t feed him well, just enough, like they did the Widows. Natalia hated to notice these things. She took out a bottle of pink calamine lotion and gave it to him.

As always, he just stared.

“Take that and rub it on your shoulder,” she snapped.

He took the tiny bottle and opened it carefully, then squirted some in his hand. While he rubbed his left shoulder, she took out a pair of cutting pliers, which made him tense even though he hadn’t been looking at her at all. For some reason this made her even angrier.

“Sit on the bed and spread your legs,” she said.

He did.

It suddenly occurred to Natalia he had no idea what she meant to do, but he still obeyed, without looking at her, just waiting, dark hair hanging over his face. She stared at him for a wild minute.

Then her knuckles went white around the pliers, and she suddenly raised her hand.

“Why are you just sitting there,” she said, her voice swelling like the ocean in a storm, “Why are you just sitting there and _letting me!”_

The Asset put his left arm over his head when she brought the pliers down; they sparked against the metal.

“Say something!” she shouted, tears of rage rolling down her face. “Fucking _say something!_ You’re supposed to be the Fist of the Red Room! The deadly one! The ghost!” She kept hitting and hitting him; sparks flew with every strike. “You killed Anya and Sofia and Katrina! Why aren’t you speaking? Why are you just letting me lead you around like some common fucking _dog!”_

With the Asset by her side, she had thought she would feel invincible. With his protection, there was nothing she could ever fear. All that power she had dreaded and admired her whole life—with her, now, _with her._ Then she’d realized he was obeying her, and even though it had been a bad shock, her invincibility should have doubled, tripled, since it turned out she was _wielding_ the weapon, able to direct it wherever she chose—not with her, but _for_ her.

Instead she was left with nothing, nothing, only a naked man on a bed, able only to keep up a token defense against her attempts to hurt him. Her last strike shook his whole body; the twig fell out of his bun which unraveled all at once, dark hair falling around his face. Natalia’s anger unraveled with it. She lowered her pliers, started gasping, and then suddenly crying in huge ugly wracking sobs.

He wasn’t a weapon at all. He was just another slave. And they’d starved him and raped him and made him beg, just like they’d done to her. And they had destroyed him, to the point that he couldn’t even fight back when she threatened to beat him to death.

He said nothing while she stood there and cried. He just kept his arm where it was, folded over his face.

It took her a long time to calm down.

When she was done, she wiped her face, took a deep breath, then abruptly handed the pliers to him. “Here. Do it yourself.”

He slowly lowered his arm and looked at her, more wary than ever.

“Do it,” she insisted, her breath still shaky and fast. “The piercings. Take them out.”

Slowly, slowly, he reached out for the pliers. Just a few hours ago she would have felt a thrill of fear, seeing anything like a weapon in his hands; but she felt nothing, only exhaustion. She was not afraid of him anymore. Somehow, that felt like losing a part of herself.

Slowly, slowly, he applied the pliers to the welded piercings. She heard the small _click_ of the metal snapping under the blade. He pulled them out—and he had to really pull, like tugging a nail out of a wall. A thin trickle of blood followed. All the while he did not make a sound.

“How long have you had those in?” she asked.

He said nothing. His genitals were still bleeding, dark blood sluggishly pooling on the bedspread.

“Do you have others?”

He eyed her more worriedly than ever, as if fearing a trick question.

And then he opened his mouth.

She felt her own face twist into horror before she remembered to school her features. There was a circlet of metal through his palate and jawbone, with a small strip pressing down on his tongue. It left him just enough leeway to swallow. But he couldn’t _speak._

 _That_ was why he didn’t speak.

She slowly came near him, eyes wide, her mind blank with shock. Then she said, “I’m going to have to do that one myself.”

There was a hint of _something_ in his gaze. It was too exhausted to be called hope. Disbelief, maybe, that she would do this. How long had he had _that_ thing in, she wondered with faint hysteria.

“Keep your mouth open as wide as you can,” she said, kneeling up on the bed and cupping his jaw.

Before she began, she noticed he was looking at her with odd, fearful intensity—and she suddenly remembered how he kept his eyes open when going through the halo. In that moment she knew, with deep certainty, that a handler had told him once not to close his eyes while he was being tortured, and he never had since.

“You can close your eyes if you want,” she said, and she saw it again, that flicker in his gaze, before his eyelids came down.

*

It wasn’t a pleasant affair. She had to push her fingers deep into his mouth to keep the metal bits from ricocheting down his throat when she snapped them off. Then she had to take them out—the metal arc from his palate, a painfully slow slide, flooding his mouth with blood; and the one stuck in his jaw bone, which had grown back around it. That one she eventually just snapped off as close as she could; it would leave sharp edges that’d poke at his tongue, but she couldn’t hope to file them off without goring his gums.

She’d brought the small bathroom trash can onto the bed so he could spit blood into it. It sloshed inside when she shifted her weight on the mattress, leaving slobbering red juice on the white plastic sides.

The Asset was trembling with pain and nervous exhaustion. Blood had dribbled down his bare chest. He hadn’t screamed.

“We’re done,” she said after a long awful while. “I can’t do anything more right now.”

He reopened his eyes. She threw the last of the metal bits into the bucket. The Asset took the time to catch his breath; then he moved his jaw, his tongue, swallowed several times.

 _“Spasibo,”_ he said very quietly.

His voice wasn’t the shock she’d expected. It was thin and hoarse, but normal. Not a hollow ghost of a voice, not a deep monster’s growl. He was still naked—at least the puncture wounds between his legs had closed, but he’d bled all over himself and the bedspread beneath him was ruined beyond all recognition.

“Don’t thank me. I’m not your handler,” Natalia said in English. This was North America. Russian was something they should pretend had never existed.

He shrugged, looking into the bucket where bits of metal soaked into gore like the insides of a mechanized beast. A shrug wasn’t the reaction Natalia had expected.

“There are no more handlers,” she insisted. “I killed them all a week ago. Do you remember? We set charges to destroy the building.”

He nodded slowly and rasped, “Clean work.”

She blinked. Approval from the Asset when she’d stopped expecting it. Abruptly, ridiculously, she wanted to laugh; she had to bite her cheek. This made him look up, eyes a little wide with something like surprise. Uncertainty.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

He said nothing. He didn’t know.

Natalia offered, “Pick one.”

Now he looked scared.

“Or I can pick one for you.”

The fear in his eyes receded a bit; now he looked expectant. She thought for a while.

“Yasha?”

It was a diminutive. The idea of calling the Asset by a pet name was greatly amusing to her—and it seemed to cause a reaction in him, too, a twitch passing over his face, too quick to be identified.

“And I’ll be Natasha.” Now she wanted a pet name, too.

He opened his mouth, but didn’t speak at once. It was like he had to pull the words from a well inside himself. “It doesn’t work.”

“What? The name?”

“Running. It doesn’t work.” He couldn’t be over thirty-five, but right now he looked so very old. “They always catch you.”

She blinked, then said, _“You_ catch us. You killed Anya when she ran. Now you are the one running.”

He shook his head. “They catch me, too.”

“You… you’ve run before?”

It was impossible to imagine—he was so quiet and beaten-down. He hadn’t dared to eat or drink without her permission. He had sat in an instrument of torture for six days without trying to free himself. He had not begged when she had put the gun against his forehead.

“I think so,” he murmured.

His entire arm clicked and readjusted, a ripple of silver to push the blood out, making it trickle between the plates.

*

He took a shower—she specifically allowed him to make it warm, because she didn’t think he would if left to make his own decisions. Then she did, and after so much cold and horror and blood, it felt like pouring life right back into her body. She still couldn’t think about where she was coming from, and where she was going next. She could not look inside herself; when she tried, all she saw was him.

That was fine by her. She was in no hurry to confront the rest.

When she came out, he had pulled off the soaked bedspread—the covers underneath were bloody also, but not so deeply that they’d feel damp. And the sheets underneath were clean and dry. He had put on his trousers and combat boots again and, sitting on the bed, he was applying more lotion at the seam of his metal shoulder. All this felt like a small revolution, because she hadn’t given him any of those orders.

She dressed where he could see—it didn’t matter, and anyway he didn’t look—then picked up the twig that had fallen out of his hair earlier, and showed it to him.

“Do you want me to teach you?” she asked. “To put your hair up in a bun?”

He looked at her, then said, “Yes.”

She showed him how. He managed after two or three tries, then rubbed a hand across his bare neck, slowly. Natasha—she would commit to the name, she would make it hers—Natasha, then, kept looking at him.

“I used to dream you killed me,” she said.

His eyes landed on her, just for a second. “Good dreams?”

He _was_ the Asset; nobody else would have thought to ask that question. She murmured, “Sometimes.”

*

They slept side by side in the bed, fully clothed and with their shoes on. The room was cold—it was a rundown motel with weak heating—but they kept each other warm just by sleeping under the same blanket.

She studied his features in the orange-tinged darkness for a long, long while. He hadn’t untangled his hair, nor shaved; but underneath it all, he had an almost absurdly pretty face, with delicate features and full bowed lips. She could have touched him, traced his mouth, pushed her fingers inside again, now that he could suck on them, use his tongue, maybe his metal hand—but she couldn’t ever do it, not when she knew for a fact he would blankly let her.

She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be touched by him anymore. He was so wildly different from the dark, fascinating monster she’d held alive in her mind. So she just looked, and eventually fell asleep as well.

*

Natasha slept for fourteen hours. When she woke up, the Asset was still profoundly asleep.

Looking at his pallor, at the dark unhealthy circles under his eyes, she remembered how the Room boasted that their Asset never slept. Now she understood they’d meant that literally. If they wanted him to be confused and mechanically obedient, sleep deprivation was a better tool than any drugs at their disposal. Unconsciousness allowed only when encased in ice.

She let him sleep. As the hours passed, it started feeling like her duty. She had stolen him—she had not _meant_ to steal him, but she had. Now she was responsible for him. Now she got to decide of his fate. She could have been his handler; he would have not disputed it. But she thought of Yelena when she looked at him. Maybe she also thought of herself.

Mostly, she kept herself busy, pretending they were lingering here on purpose, going out of the motel to buy cigarettes and a newspaper, her red hair hidden under a woolen hat, her rough chilblained hands shoved deep in her pockets. They could afford to wait a few days. She was reasonably paranoid, but it would have been ludicrous for the Room to have somehow tracked them here. Once they moved into more populated areas, it would be time to look over their shoulder again. But in this tiny Canadian town still sleeping under acres of snow, Natasha could allow herself to only circle the block a few times.

When she came back into the motel, he was still there, a lump under the covers. She checked his pulse, then went to take a shower, and slept by his side once more. In the morning, he hadn’t woken up, and so she did it all over again.

*

He slept for three days. Just when she was starting to think maybe he’d slipped into a coma, he stirred and opened his eyes, looked at his surroundings, then at her with no evidence of recognition.

She called, “Yasha.”

It took him a long minute to remember. He sat up, winced, rubbed his eyes. “ _Ya dumal chto eto—”_

“English,” she chided him.

 _“Eto angliyskiy,”_ he protested dazedly. Then he heard himself and looked confused.

She stared at him. Not only could he only speak Russian now, but his Russian had changed. She’d only heard him say _Thank you_ the day before, but he’d said it like a native. Now he spoke stiffly and with a heavy American accent.

The brain repaired itself during sleep, and the Asset healed faster than anyone. Obviously, during the first true rest he’d been allowed in years, some major gears had begun shifting and clicking. Hopefully back into place. She wondered if he was maybe going back to its original state.

She wondered if it meant the Asset wasn’t even _Russian._

“It’s okay,” she said. “Just don’t speak. You’re good at that, Yashenka.”

He gave her a flat look. It was nothing, just a microexpression, but it shocked her. He was so much more like a person already.

No wonder they’d put metal in his mouth and around his head. No wonder they’d raped him and tortured him and not let him sleep. Again and again and again, when he was fighting back tooth and nail against them. Natasha felt a strange new urge when she looked at him. Not just duty anymore, something more intense and less controlled.

*

They found a car, and of course Natasha was the one to get behind the wheel. The Asset fell asleep again for the whole seven hour drive, curled up against the door, his head against the window.

When he woke up, his English had come back; he mumbled thanks to her for driving while he put his hair up, already practiced enough to do it without thinking.

He walked after her into the new motel—nearly identical to the previous one—sluggish and slow like a sleepwalker. When she got out of her shower, he was sitting on the bed, rubbing his face. Natasha expected him to stay tired for a long, long while.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You can sleep as much as you want. I’m keeping watch.”

He stared at her. Then he surprised her by saying, “If we split up, it’ll be harder for them to find us.” He swallowed, which looked painful; maybe his mouth wasn’t done healing yet. “And that way I will not slow you down.”

Natasha paused just before putting on her shirt. Then she kept going, slipped it on, pushing her head through it and ruffling her hair.

“They killed Yelena,” she said, not looking at him. “My sister. I don’t know even know why. Whatever she did, it was supposed to be a lesson for me. But Yelena was the only other one left. The others had already been executed by you. So when she died, I thought: they have nothing to take away from me anymore.” She swallowed. “So I started killing them. Only there _was_ no one left for me to save. I couldn’t fight back before that, you understand. Which means I was always going to do it for nothing. They’d made it so I could never rescue anyone from them.” She put on a hoodie she’d bought on the road, to be warm. “But then you were there.”

Tears were rolling down her face, though her voice was even. He slowly sat down next to her. She hadn’t even heard him get up, or walk around the bed.

“Don’t ask me to leave you behind,” she said, and her voice trembled this time, once, dangerously. “Ask me anything but that.”

His metal arm slid around her waist, slowly. She put her own arms around him and pulled him close; and smelled his skin, and felt the fabric of his shirt, and heard his heartbeat. A few strands of hair had fallen out of his bun. He was holding so tightly onto her, burying his face into her neck; his own cheeks were wet. For the second time, she thought to herself she could never be afraid of him again. But this time she wondered if it meant maybe she trusted him.

“Natasha.” He said her name carefully, like it was a bird he cradled in his hand. Then, tentatively, “Natashenka.”

“No Russian,” she mumbled, which was nonsense, really, since she’d picked Russian names for them both, had barely even changed her own.

“Nat,” he tried.

This shocked her more than a kiss would have. He was still such a cobbled-up version of a person; they both were. But God, he was trying so hard to put himself back together. And somehow, his attempts now felt like he was trying to let her do the same.

His bun suddenly unraveled again. He made a noise, then pushed out of the embrace. “My—my hair—”

She couldn’t have laughed, because he looked genuinely scared, jerkily patting the covers for his twig, eyes too wide when he couldn’t find it. She leaned down to grab the paper bag from the motel store and said, “Here.”

She’d bought rainbow hair ties, among other things. He looked at them, still pale and breathing fast, then picked the pink one. Holding up his hair with an elastic came more easily to him; and after a fumbling minute he managed a decent bun. He gasped for air, then screwed his eyes shut.

“When it’s loose,” he said, “I…”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence; she could think of a few explanations for him not to like things hanging around his head. They sat in silence for a while, until they were both more or less calm again.

She had dreamed of what it would be like to kiss the Asset. To be fucked by him. She had imagined him machine-like, unyielding, efficient. She had dreamed herself helpless and dominated by him, and the thought had angered and frightened and aroused her in equal measure. Now she wasn’t sure if she wanted anything from him. Only there was this complicated feeling in her heart every time she looked at him, pulsing, aching; holding him, just now, had soothed it a little.

The motel room was cold, like the other one on the night before. It was nothing compared to the freighter’s hold, or to their swim in the sea. But they still slipped under the covers, and this time they lay down closer to each other, knees bumping.

“We’re going to cross the border,” she said quietly, in the dark. “We’re going to find a nice little suburb. And we’re going to live on as the most boring couple of all America.”

He was asleep already.

*

They kissed a few days later. They had been grocery shopping, both of them in hoodies and caps. Someone had been looking at them in a way that had triggered her ingrained reflexes—and his own, too, obviously. She remembered only how the Asset had suddenly been very close, so close she could smell his skin again, feel the rasp of his shadowed face. He had not tried to put his tongue inside her, only pressed their mouths together. Their lips were cracked and dry; they had caught together a bit when he’d pulled back.

As soon as they were out of the shop, taking their bags to the car, he stepped away from her. “Sorry.”

She blinked. “What?”

“You said never to do that again.”

In the freighter hold, she realized. When he had offered himself, as anyone from the Red Room would offer themselves to a superior. She bumped shoulders with him—or tried to; he was so much taller than her. “You don’t have to do what I say. I’m not your handler.”

“I know,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Sometimes I forget who you are. But I never think you’re my handler. You’re nothing like one.” He licked his lips, and she saw a hint of red.

“Are you bleeding?”

He glanced at her, too quick for her to read his gaze, then looked away. “I cut myself.”

There was still metal in his mouth, which was a logical explanation. But she’d been biting her cheek after kissing him, and she wondered then if he’d done the same, bitten himself so hard he’d drawn blood.

*

That night he regressed almost completely to the Asset.

When she came out naked of her shower—like she always did; nudity meant nothing to her anymore—he went to his knees and put his hands behind his back, looking down. She looked at him for a terrible second, then walked around him, ignored him, dressed again. Decided to give him all the time he needed.

Three hours later he was still kneeling there, faintly trembling, staring ahead, and she abruptly realized she was being a coward, waiting for the problem to go away on its own. She went to him and helped him stand and murmured apologies he couldn’t possibly comprehend. She pulled him into bed and he went with wide confused eyes.

“Lie down. On your side, facing me. Close your eyes,” she said, drawing up the covers.

He did. She lied down, mirroring him.

“Breathe deep,” she said. “Think of your left hand.” Then she realized her mistake. “I mean—your _right_ hand. Really try to feel it. Your palm, the inside of your palm.” She swallowed. “Your thumb. Your index finger. Your middle finger, your ring finger, your little finger. Can you hold them in your mind?”

He nodded. How comforting orders were to him.

“All right. Move to your wrist. Then up to your forearm…”

She went to his elbow, across his back and his shoulders. She made him feel his stomach, then his thighs, one after the other, his legs and his feet and his separate toes. Then she went back up to his neck, his skull, his brows and his nose and his lips. It took the better part of two hours. By the end he was breathing deeply on his own.

“This is your body,” she said. “Feel it all at once. All the parts of it together.” The words flowed out of her. “People can break in and do some damage. They can turn it against you. They can cage you inside of it. But they can’t ever, ever take it from you.”

He reopened his eyes, then, and slowly reached out to touch her breastbone, where her heart was beating. And he said, very quietly, “Not from you either.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it, leave a comment! :D


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